


It's My Party

by Lynx22281



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, pre-destiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-14 01:45:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7147082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynx22281/pseuds/Lynx22281
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel throws his very first birthday party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's My Party

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jennilah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennilah/gifts).



> So...this was a prompt that [Jennilah](http://jennilah.tumblr.com/) posted on her own tumblr that I have since lost the link to, but essentially she wanted Cas to throw himself a birthday party with cake and board games and then nobody shows up. Sad....

Castiel stood in the middle of the den surveying the layout of the room.  A chocolate layer cake with two green and while candles – one in the shape of a 1 and the other in the shape of a 6 – had the place of honor on a glass cake stand in the middle of the sofa table.  An ice bucket, pitcher of fresh lemonade, stack of yellow paper cups, and bowl of ruffled potato chips flanked the cake.  An articulated banner exclaiming _Happy Birthday!_ in multi-colored metallic letters hung down from the edge of the table. 

 

The _Game of Life_ was set up on the low coffee table on the other side of the couch, all of the pieces meticulously laid out and ready for play.  _Sorry_ , _Monopoly_ , _Scrabble_ , and _Yahtzee_ were on standby as were a deck of _Uno_ cards and a deck of regular cards.  The sounds of The Beatles drifted out of the big speakers set in the corners of the room. 

 

Castiel had never been to another kid’s birthday party before, so he wasn’t 100% certain that his party plans were what his guests expected.  Well, he’d been to his cousins’ birthday celebrations, but they were always strangely grown-up affairs that usually meant a dress-up, sit-down dinner on the good China at his grandmother’s house with the whole family present and a single gift for the birthday kid.  Most of the time the present came in the form of a savings bond that never failed to disappoint.  And the only cousin who ever had cake at his birthday dinner was Gabriel, but that was only because he baked it and brought it himself.  Grandmother declared that sweets weren’t suitable for children.

 

Thankfully, Castiel’s parents were a little more indulgent when it came to celebrating his birthdays.  While they didn’t throw him parties, they always took him to the zoo and let him pick out his own birthday present from the zoo’s gift shop.  His mom would fix French toast for his birthday breakfast and his dad would add a new tool to his very own tool box.  It wasn’t much, but it was perfect.

 

This was his first birthday without his mom.  Neither he nor his dad wanted to carry on their birthday tradition without her, so his dad let him decide what he wanted.  At first, Castiel thought he’d just skip any celebration, but then he realized it’d be a good chance to invite some of his new classmates over to the farm for an afternoon. 

 

He’d started public school for the first time in his life just last month, having been taught at home by his mom since he was four.  With her death, his dad couldn’t keep up with the farm work and teaching Castiel at the same time, so Castiel joined the local teenagers at Sioux Falls High School for his junior year.  In the few weeks since the beginning of the school year, he’d managed to make the acquaintance of a handful of people that he thought liked him enough to warrant an invitation to his birthday party.

 

When the mantel clock chimed the quarter hour and he looked up to see that it was past two o’clock, the start time for his party, he started to question whether any of those so-called acquaintances would ever be more than that.

 

He headed into the kitchen to triple-check the copy of his bee-shaped invitation stuck to the fridge door with the magnet he’d gotten from the Grand Canyon two years ago. 

__

All of the information was correct.  Maybe his guests were just going to arrive fashionably late.  Nobody showed up on time for a party.  Right?

 

Castiel caught a glimpse of his dad out the window, heading towards the house from the hives with his protective veil in hand.  His salt and pepper beard was much bushier than Castiel’s mom ever let it get.  She would have hauled him out to the porch by his ear and taken the straight razor to his neck if she’d seen him looking so scruffy, but Castiel couldn’t complain when his own hair was starting to curl over his ears.  He couldn’t bring himself to let anyone else get close to his head with a pair of scissors.

 

Angrily, he pushed at the tears that sprang to his eyes.  He’d just wanted one afternoon to be a kid.  To forget his dead mom and his depressed dad.  To have fun with new friends.  To eat too much cake and play board games.  He didn’t even care if nobody brought him a present (he was wearing the new sky blue button-down shirt his dad had given him earlier, so he at least he’d gotten one gift).

 

He watched his dad pause in the middle of the yard, bringing one hand up to shield his eyes from the early afternoon sun as he looked down the long drive that led up to the house.  Out on the dirt state road, there was a cloud of dust billowing out behind a mammoth black car that slowed down to take the turn onto their property.  His dad nodded once without glancing up to the house before heading towards the barn.

 

Castiel pushed open the screen door and walked out onto the farmhouse’s big porch as the car came to a stop next to his dad’s beat up red and white F-150.

 

Sam Winchester bounded out of the passenger’s side almost before the car came to a complete stop, brightly wrapped present in hand.  “Cas!  I’m so sorry we’re late!”

 

Even though, Castiel had given Sam an invitation to his party, he never actually expected the 8th grader to show up.  The junior and senior high schools in town were on the same campus and shared a library, cafeteria, gymnasium, and auditorium.  Sam and Castiel had been paired up at the beginning of the school year as part of the mentor program between the two schools, though Castiel wondered who was supposed to be the mentor and was supposed to be the mentee in their paring since he was the new kid and Sam had been in the Sioux Falls schools since kindergarten.  Castiel figured that Sam would see their relationship as one forced upon him rather than one fostered naturally, even though the 13-year-old had to be the kindest, brightest teenager he’d ever met (never mind that his interaction with other teenagers was mostly limited to his eccentric cousins).

 

Castiel smiled, bright and wide as Sam thrust the book-sized present into his hands.  “Technically, the party hasn’t started yet.”

 

Sam frowned, glancing around the yard devoid of any other cars except the pick-up truck and the vehicle he arrived in.  “Are we the first ones here?”

 

“Yeah, that’s ok though.  I uh…wasn’t really expecting everybody to show up anyway.”  Castiel fiddled with the spirals of green and blue curling ribbon that decorated the gift.  

 

“Well, my dumb brother insisted on coming with me, so at least you’ve got the two of us!” Sam grinned reassuringly before dashing back to the car where someone had popped open the trunk.  He yelled over his shoulder, “We had to stop so he could pick up a present for you.”

 

Castiel stood, dumbfounded, at the top of the porch steps as Sam returned with a flat of flowers laying across his outstretched arms followed by his brother with another flat of flowers.

 

His brother.  _Dean_.

 

Senior.  Captain of the football team.  Most popular guy at Sioux Falls High. 

 

Somebody who had no reason to know Castiel even existed.

 

Castiel swallowed, struck speechless at the sight of the two Winchesters standing on the flagstone walkway with their offerings for him. 

 

“Uh,” Dean started before clearing his throat roughly, seeming oddly shy compared to the outgoing guy he appeared to be at school.  “Sammy says you guys have bee hives out here and that bees in general are dying off so we gotta save the ones we have and make the environment friendly for them, so I…er…we…got you these.”

 

He held the container up for Castiel to inspect as he named off the plants.  “Zinnias, asters, and lavender.  I know it’s kinda late to start planting things, but Sam says you have a greenhouse and can take cuttings or whatever for next year.  Oh!  There’s a bag of seed packs buried in here somewhere,” he rambled as he carefully jostled his flat looking for said bag.

 

“I’ve got it,” Sam announced, shaking the plastic bag of seeds at his brother.

 

Castiel beamed at the pair of them as he set the present in his hand on the railing and skipped down the steps to take the first pallet from Sam to set on the porch floor for now.  He eagerly looked forward to getting his fingers in the dirt as he added the new plants to the flowering garden out by the hives, but that would have to wait until later.  “This is a very thoughtful gift.  Thank you both so much.”

 

Dean caught Castiel’s eye as he turned to take the second flat, giving him a small smile that was soft and genuine, contrasting to the smirky grin he wore around campus.  Castiel found himself easily returning the gesture. 

 

“I have cake and board games in the living room, if you’d like to come inside,” he offered after setting the pallet down and dusting his hands on the back of his jeans.

 

Smiling, Castiel led the brothers inside to play host for his only guests at his very first party.

 

Later on, he would look back fondly at the almost-disappointing birthday party.  He would remember learning that Sam had already considered him a friend before the party invite.  He would remember Dean subtly adding another blue people peg to his little car when he landed on the marriage tile in _Life._   He would remember his promise to bring slices of pumpkin pie to school to share with Sam and Dean later in the fall when the pumpkins grew from the seeds they gave him.  He would remember his unspoken promise to make and freeze an apple pie after the harvest for Dean’s 18th birthday in January.

 

Most importantly, he would remember his 16th birthday party as when Dean and Sam became two of the most important people in his life.

**Author's Note:**

> It's not expressly stated, but just in case you didn't notice, Cain and Colette are Cas's mom and dad in this little verse and Sam and Dean have been raised by Bobby.


End file.
